to think this level of dumbing down has to be a joke?

[mayorquimby]

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7705922.stm

in a nut shell, a number of local councils want to ban their staff from using latin terms because it might confuse people.
Now i'm not talking about quoting the republic but simple terms like "vice versa" "QED" or the abbreviation "e.g.".
i mean FFS surely this is just pandering to morons.

[bronze]

I see I'm not the only ne who think its crap. It took me so long to write that that plenty of other people managed to post similar views int he meantime.

[mabanana]

No, I don't. Agree we will get into a spiral of stupidity, where language gets more and more simple, and less and less expressive. I am STUNNED by the complexity of language and even by the length of the stories in vintage children's books. Even very small children were expected to be able to cope with texts that consisted of more than one word per page. I am reading Paddington with my seven year old and the sentence construction and vocabulary is so complex compared to most modern books.

[rebelmum1]

What annoys me is people don't think this is a bit odd and a waste of time and money, namely my money and the latin speakers money..

[rebelmum1]

for the benefit of the tiniest minority ...

[TheArmadillo]

Everyone uses council services.

Everyone needs to understand for example their council tax bill, their benefit entitlement, their right to protest over a planning application.

Those are just a few examples.

And yes there is a huge number of people out there who have what would not even qualify as functional literacy? In which case they need support - even if to access a course which would teach them literacy skills.

And confusing e.g. with 'egg' ffs - if someone does, what are they supposed to do? Hide in a cupboard ashamed throughout the rest of their life?

A council has to provide services for every member of the population they cover. That means those that cannot read and write, or only have basic skills, those who cannot understand latin phrases etc as well as those that can.

[Simplysally]

I don't have a problem with this - as someone else said, the Latin terms have been largely dropped in legal texts for some years (although some older tutors may still used them to confuse Freshers). Communications from councils should be clear to all.

[TheArmadillo]

oh ffs

just sit at laugh at those you call 'morons', don't actually live in the real world. Assume everyone else has your level of education. Assume that anyone who doesn't have your skills should be stopped from accessing services, should be mortifyed and should isolate themselves from the rest of the world cos obviously they don't pay taxes, they don't have the right to the same information everyone else does.

Just sit and laugh content in your own little worlds.

[Simplysally]

I say this as a person who spent 40 minutes helping a member of staff fill out her application for maternity leave last week as she didn't understand the terminology used on the form explaining the legal requirements (she was still slightly baffled when she went away). I work in an industry which employs largely non-English speakers - which is possibly representative of a lot of London boroughs. I'm the world's biggest snob but in this case, I appaud it.

[catsmother]

I'm all for using plain English and using the minimum number of words to explain something but I can't imagine that swathes of constituents have been left in ignorance and confusion because their council uses well known terms such as "e.g.".

The sort of person who lacks basic literacy skills isn't going to have a sudden "eureka" moment, as in, written communications suddenly becoming more understandable, just because some well known and everyday Latin words/abbreviations are removed. I'd hazard a guess that "e.g." is more often understood than any number of longer and/or obscure and/or legal style words commonly found in council literature.

[Simplysally]

Applaud even.

[Simplysally]

Applaud even.

[catsmother]

In any case, I'm not so sure it's the vocabulary used in council literature which confuses people, but the composition of the stuff which can be cringeworthy. I visit council websites across the country on a regular basis as part of my job to try and extract all sorts of basic information - just as any ordinary householder would, regardless of their literacy skills - and I frequently find the lack of basic grammar, common sense and consistency displayed on many sites to be absolutely shocking. Talk about making a good impression - not.

[FattipuffsandThinnifers]

PMSL at '"A Campaign spokesman said the ban might stop people confusing the Latin abbreviation e.g. with the word "egg".'

YANBU, this is an idiotic waste of money. As catsmother said, it's one thing to work on official literature to make it easier to understand by simplifying the language, but it's another to do this by removing/replacing very well-known, established phrases (even if they are of Latin origin).

So much of LA literature (e.g. () council tax stuff) is so badly written it's unbelievable. But it's not the Latin that makes it so.

This is absolutely on a path to dumbing down. Next we'll see text-speak as standard official communication.

[bronze]

Oh I agree Catsmother. Its often so ambiguous and I come away not really sure if I've given the the answer they were looking for.

[UnfortunatelyMurderedMe]

heres a good example
Confusion over 11 plus. They would have been told off for putting FAILED in the past...so they changed the wording.
And people told the children they had passed, and they hadnt.

and more

[Simplysally]

I went to a 'High School' over 20 years ago so it's not a new terminology nor, I'd say, particularly American. I don't think my 11+ results letter said I had failed, it said 'We are delighted to offer Simplysally a place at XXXXXXXXXXX High School' which wasn't the name of the grammar school so it was fairly obvious.

[rebelmum1]

I mean have you checked out health and safety speak lately, now that is incomprehensible.

[rebelmum1]

I was told I had a 'hazard to postpersons'.. and that they were going to check for 'rolling compliance' ..

[rebelmum1]

If people can't read you don't change the language to accomodate them, you divert the cash spent on useless bureaucrats to educate them..

[OrmIrian]

What about words of more than 3 syllables then? And words with Latin derivations? Or borrowings from French.

You cannot treat adults like children. It's insulting.

Of course everyone should be able to understand the documents a council issues, but surely the majority of them can tackle something like 'e.g'? Do they don't read anything or listen to the news? FWIW I don't blame the council in a sense. But it's pathetic that people are so incapable of understand their own language - and it is their own language. That is the way English has developed over the centuries. It's not some weird foreign tongue.

[Upwind]

"told I had a 'hazard to postpersons'.. and that they were going to check for 'rolling compliance' .. "



Please tell us what you had that prompted this, my imagination is running wild.

Agree with catsmother, improving the literacy of council officials so they learn to write in plain English would be much more sensible than banning commonly used words that happen to be latin.

[stillstanding]

If you don't put the full stops in e.g. spellcheck changes it to egg. Which means that many of my docs reference eggs alas ...

[rebelmum1]

my dog!

[onager]

I think the problem might be "particularly if English is not their first language"

Can we assume that Welsh will be banned too as that must cause confusion.

[rebelmum1]

yes there are cases where councils have also taken time and expense translating all their docs into many different languages ..